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The Turd Sandwich Salesmen

One of the interesting things about what’s happening in American politics is how the chatter skulls are struggling to understand it. In fact, they are not really trying understand it. Their efforts are much closer to denial than genuine interest. They feel threatened, so they try to jam the bad news into a box they have labeled “bad think” hoping that will make it go away. At least it fits into their comfortable worldview, even if it is still stinking up the place.

The Trump story is the most obvious example. The crooks and hustlers of the Conservative Industrial Complex see him as a dire threat to their cozy lifestyles so they have been churning out copy “explaining” why Trump is evil and his voters are stupid. The hope being that people don’t want to be thought of as stupid so they will go along with the assertion that Trump is Hitler.

I don’t think guys like Matt Walsh are sitting around thinking it through. He’s not that bright. It’s a visceral reaction to dis-confirmation. Red Team leaders were supposed to wave their banners and the Red Team supporters were supposed to respond with the team cheers. Suddenly those people are at another rally, singing different cheers for different people and different banners.

There are two possible explanation for this unexpected event. One is the people running Red Team have failed in some way. They either have a bad product or they failed to know important things about their customers and supporters. The people are walking off because they don’t like what Red Team is offering.

The other answer is that the people are stupid or gullible and the guy leading them astray is evil. In this case, Trump is casting a spell on stupid people like the Pied Piper. Human nature being what it is, it’s no surprise that the response from Red Team has been to blame magic. The evil spirit called Trump has put the whammy on them.

Reality is something different. The problem both American parties face and what mainstream parties face all over the West is the dilemma of the turd sandwich. One side of the political class offers the voters a turd sandwich on rye. The other side offers a turd sandwich on whole wheat. Both sides lecture us nonstop that voting is our moral and civic duty. Therefore, we must eat our turd sandwich.

Of course, there would be riots in the streets if it is said candidly so both sides of the political class ignore the filling and focus on the bread. We are repeatedly told by Team Whole Wheat that rye is poison and only lunatics eat rye. Team Rye tells us that wheat eaters are bigots and want to put rye eaters in chains. Their hyperbole aside, there is a very real difference between rye and whole wheat. No would deny it.

In a mass media culture, you can keep a lot of people busy shouting back and forth over trivia, like rye versus whole wheat, to keep the analogy going. What’s going on right now is a big chunk of voters has decided to look at the filling. They don’t like their turd sandwich and they have no interest in debating which type of bread is better. The trouble is, the menu at the political deli only has turd sandwiches.

That’s what the boys and girls of the commentariat cannot fathom. They ticked all the right boxes on their way into the club. They memorized all the arguments and they know how to tell you rye is better than wheat or wheat is better than rye. They are filling in all the right circles so everyone is supposed to fall in line. They just can’t understand that it’s not the sales pitch, it’s the product. The public is just not interested in their turd sandwich.

That’s why the pathological Trump bashing has had so little impact. In fact, it has probably helped him more than hurt. He represents a rejection of the party and it’s pitchmen in the media. The fact that they hate him is his best asset. Voting for Trump, for most people, has become a vehicle to express their disgust for what the party has been feeding them for 25 years.

If you are on the party payroll or you work in conservative media, you really can’t face that reality. You have to keep believing that it will once again be a debate about the merits of whole wheat versus rye. That’s why they keep trotting out new arguments for why Donald Trump is a fraud, evil or about to implode. That’s why they have gone all-in on a guy like Marco Rubio.

Otherwise, these self-proclaimed intellectuals and opinion makers have to face a terrible reality. That’s the fact they are not, in fact, intellectuals or opinion makers. They are just hired staff in paper hats selling turd sandwiches for the people signing their checks. That’s a lot to ask of people who think a lot of themselves, but lack the sort of introspection required to admit error.

Kinda reminds me of Obama’s go-to argument (which was Kerry’s before him, and Clinton’s before Kerry, and yea verily unto all the generations of modern Democrats) — “the people love our policies; we just failed to adequately explain how awesome they are.” Always the messaging, never the content. Seems like Obama was out there giving a “major speech” every other week. And when that doesn’t work, they complain about media bias.

What’s funny about this is that, at least as far as I can tell, there seems to be a qualitative difference between the turd salesmen on the right and the turd salesmen on the left. The guys on the right show some glimmer of awareness about what’s going on, though they’re in deep denial over it. At some level, they seem to understand that bumper-sticker slogans are not reality. Most have at least some contact with life outside the elite bubble, so they have fewer illusions about what the world is like beyond the walls of the manor. The folks… Read more »

Want proof? See the comments.
It’s a HuffPo satire about a future President Trump insulting the “Holy Koran”.
Believe it or not, literally half of the comments are Democrats saying “This is terrible!” and the rest of them trying to verify that it’s not true. They really believed it. They really, really believed it. Oh My Gods.

Can’t it be that they do know? And that they are using that hatred to manipulate people to enthuse over Trump who is one of their own? Neat trick, play the electorate for fools by promoting Trump with nonstop media coverage. All publicity is good publicity. Especially in this case where it is known that the people don’t trust the media.

That’s what I think is going on.The MSM knows that we are inclined to like anyone they hate, and that calling people stupid just makes them more stubborn. These attacks serve to distract from the other guy who is against illegal immigration, but has an ACTUAL CONSERVATIVE RECORD -Cruz.

When the media want to kill a story, they just ignore it. Cruz is the one getting the “ignore ” treatment, combined with some lying attacks and worst of all being equated with Rubio.

What’s blowing the chattering class’s minds looks like math, as in math don’t lie, and what I read about people who call themselves the Treepers, as in III%. It’s the Up Your’s Party. That silent majority Trump mentions. I think it is in part the Tea Party reformed, and people who really have had quite enough of the political class. Think about it, the Tea Party plurality didn’t just evaporate into thin air. Because that is what it is, a plurality. Very difficult to stop a plurality, almost impossible, (never mind an armed one). I think it is a plurality… Read more »

The Tea Party was THEIR (the GOPe’s) last chance, and they blew it. Before the Tea Party coalesced, the talk was all of forming a third party. But the good soldiers in the Republican Party pleaded and cajoled not to do something so ruinously hasty. Instead, they said, the GOP was a perfectly good party, all you had to do was “take it over from the inside”. So began all those lectures on how to start at the lowest level, electing good solid conservatives, and before you know it, the GOP would be a conservative powerhouse. The poor, trusting conservatives… Read more »

Right. I agree whole heartedly. Thinking there is something even more to it, it goes deeper than that. Secession. People seceding from the influences of the political class. Seceding from the bankrupt policies, the lies, the dissimulation, most of all seceding from the treason of values and principles and the incessant meddling in our affairs. But most of all, the Tea Party was withdrawal of consent. That is secession in itself. Consent and secession are very powerful things. So is a plurality. And we have Mr. Trump, he is now part and parcel of a growing plurality, a plurality of… Read more »

First, hideous and gross sandwich idea. Bleck. Second, for all of this election’s bizarreness, you must admit that this is the same old same old. Let me point out that once again the media is choosing the candidate for the Republicans. Maddening. Yes, it looks quite different this time around due to the exciting atmosphere surrounding Trump. If one looks beyond that, however, it is the media elite giving Trump all the air beneath his wings and starving the other campaigns of oxygen. So what if they are saying bad things about him when they cover him. They cover him… Read more »

Hey Turk, not happy with the status quo at all, no. And maybe I’m not crazy about Trump when he is behaving childishly. But I do really care for masculine men, I sure do. And there is a lot that I like about Trump. But did you misunderstand me? I suspect that Trump is actually an establishment candidate. I also believe that the media always wields its immense power to select the republican nominee and that this year it is doing the same with Trump. So we think we are happily choosing the rebel candidate, but we are being played… Read more »

It would seem many Americans have felt that for a long time they’ve really only had two choices; rye or whole wheat. Either way, the filling was going to be the same. But by giving them the option of rye or wheat, at least they had a decision about what was going to get shoved down their throats. From just about every indicator, the politics of both Republicans and Democrats seem to have done very little to improve the life of the average American citizen, but has continued to favor wealthy elites of both parties. Thus moving the middle class… Read more »

Karl, I think there is a large spiritual component. America, like Germany, has experienced a great increase in material wealth over the last 25 years. In general, we should be happy and most of us are happy. It’s that sense, however, that the people in charge don’t like us very much. There’s also the very really fact that a substantial number of Americans have not enjoyed the last 25 years. Simply putting them on welfare feels wrong, but no one in charge seems to care about that.

@ theZman – You are right! The joy of work is the true nature of man at a spiritual level. The reward of one’s own labor brought into being with one’s own two hands brings spiritual satisfaction and personal reward that even money itself can’t provide. From the potters wheel to the blacksmiths forge, to the farmers field or a woman’s hearth and home. Created ourselves, human being are by nature creators who do so through the expression of work. For men, it was work in fields, or in the mines or on the assembly line. For women, it was… Read more »

I’d argue that people hardly care one way or the other whether the GOP is with Trump or against it. They aren’t going for Trump because they’re against the GOP. They’re going for Trump because he isn’t seen to be going along with political correctness. He dared to take on the seemingly all-powerful pc-brigade on illegal immigration from Mexico and on the wisdom of importing lots of Muslims from countries where a lot of Muslims rather like Jihad. It isn’t that they’re angry with the GOP. Then, when people on television complain about Trump for the very reasons they like… Read more »

I like Trump for those reasons too. But I doubt he’d be having the success he is right now if the GOP hadn’t spent the last 7 years engaged in Failure Theater in Washington. No one expects a 100% success rate. But when voters do their part and give the Republicans first the House and then the Senate, and the voters STILL hear nothing but whines and excuses about how it’s just too hard, then I think people are willing to convert their admiration for a shit-disturber like Trump into actual votes. He wouldn’t have gotten where he is if… Read more »

But we’re basically in agreement. I know next to nothing about the GOP and I expect most other Trump supporters know even less than I do about it and care even less. Now, the GOP can view all this as a slap in the face (and hopefully learn from it) but it’s an inadvertent slap in the face, whereas some people seem to think it’s all about trying to give the GOP a slap in the face.

It’s just that his support is coming from different directions. Some of it is from people who maybe didn’t vote Republican before: union people, blue collar workers whose jobs have been outsourced, or whose jobs have been lost entirely because of free trade/loss of manufacturing. Those people probably don’t know or care about the details of what the Republicans have been doing over the last 10 years or so; they’re responding to someone who is addressing their immediate concerns. But longterm, dyed-in-the-wool conservatives (the kind who frequent political blogs like this!) ARE seeing Trump’s arrival as another episode in the… Read more »